My 9-5 (sometimes way later) Life

All this talk about travel, and I haven’t even begun to explain my new job working for BMG! I mean my blog title does suggest I am doing some kind of business...

A typical day (even though this job is extremely atypical) consists of waking up and getting ready, and then meeting Pedro downstairs for breakfast in the hotel (yummy hot breakfast every morning is definitely a plus). We usually have 1-2 meetings per day, either in an office in Zagreb or in one of the surrounding smaller cities. While we are not traveling to/having a meeting, we are making phone calls to Croatian companies to schedule more meetings. We make our own company leads, and have the freedom to call whatever company we would like to meet with. Obviously we contact the largest companies first, but one thing I love about this job is the autonomy I have about how I want the project to run. For example, I noticed the brand of chocolates the hotel leaves on my bed every day, looked up the brand and company contact information on the internet, and am currently in contact with the CEO right now in trying to schedule a meeting with him. Or Pedro and I will be out at night, try a beer we like, and be in contact with the brewery the next day. However, making phone calls really just plain sucks. One time a secretary told me that her CEO “was on vacation for two years” and another one said “I am not interested in buying your sugar” when I told her that we had been working with Croatian Minister of Finance Ivan SUKER. You just have to laugh it off, or make a game out of it – whoever makes the first meeting of the day from a phone call buys the other a coffee, or something along those lines. Pedro and I have a good time, despite the absurdity of a reciting a sales script to 30 Croatian secretaries per day.

The actual meeting is the fun part. First off, why are we even meeting with the CEO’s of the largest companies in Croatia? Before I was sent here, Pedro was “opening” the project here. The opening, which usually takes a month from the start of the project, is when the consultant meets with as many government officials and economic decision-makers as possible within the country to gain their support for our publication. The Ambassador of Croatia in France invited The European Times (the publication I work with) to make a report on Croatia, and Pedro also met with the Minister of Finance, head of the Zagreb Stock Exchange, President of the Trade and Investment Agency, etc. I have done some opening meetings here as well; for example, I met with the President of the American Chamber of Commerce and the German Chamber of Commerce, as well as with the Mayor of Zagreb. We get as much information from them as possible about the Croatian economy, and also receive letters from them to promote The European Times Croatia. Showing companies that we have met with the government and that these officials want to produce this positive report about their country definitely sparks the various CEO’s interests. Now what exactly is this “report”? The European Times has about 6 editions per year on 6 different countries. The European Times Croatia report will feature an article on the Prime Minister who will talk about Croatia and its succession into the European Union, and then the various sectors of the economy will be highlighted – infrastructure, technology, pharmaceutical, energy, food & agriculture, construction, tourism, etc. The publication is then distributed to 410,000 readers throughout Western Europe - to all parliamentaries, embassies, international funders, and the CEO’s of the top 500 companies in Europe. So basically these reports are free for the super mega big dogs in the European world, and Croatia is an important country for them to learn more about because it is planning on being admitted to the EU in 2011.

So in addition to gathering all of this information about the country through our “opening” meetings that we then send to our production office, we have to find a way to sponsor this report! That’s where the “sales” part of my job comes in…

SO the meetings are essentially to introduce the report to the CEO, and to show him the value in not only gaining more exposure in Europe, but also in supporting the initiative of the Croatian government. There are four parts to the meeting, and my field training has essentially been learning each part, one at a time.

1. Introduction: The night before, we assemble a tailor-made PowerPoint that describes the report, its distribution, why Croatia needs exposure, and why we are meeting with that specific company in that specific sector.

2. Fact-finding: This is where one of us asks the CEO questions about his company: Who are his clients? What projects is the company working on? Is the company looking to expand into Europe? Who are his competitors and what is his market share? What kind of relations does he have with the government and international funding institutions? (I love this part; you learn SO much about the way a company works in an international setting)

3. Pitching: Sales pitches are stories, questions, and tactics used to build value for the product you are selling, so an example of a pitch to, say, an insurance company in our case would be: “You have shown us how your main project is to increase your sales force to attract investors. When we met with the leader of World Bank Croatia, she emphasized that she is looking to allocate funds to company projects that she feels will have a positive impact on the financial sector. How important is it to you to show how well your project is doing to our readers such as the President of World Bank Croatia, and why would you be the best partner for these international funders?”

These examples and questions allow the CEO’s to realize the value of exposure within our publication, and so the night before a meeting Pedro and I discuss what kind of angles we should use depending on the type of company we are meeting.

4. THE CLOSE woop woop: This is the most critical part of a meeting, where you “lay it all out on the table” and truly use the analytical aspect of sales. You summarize the meeting and the major points, and try to make a match between what the CEO’s objectives are and what exposure in our publication would provide him to achieve those objectives.

At first I was intimidated to do this part of the meeting, but it is actually pretty thrilling when you have good sales angles and you make a true connection with the CEO.

In order to move from a trainee to a consultant, you have to do the close and sell 30,000 euro, which could all be in one sale or in many small sales. Our turnover in Croatia for the past 3 months has been 15,000 euro, so I kind of figured I would become consultant during my next project. However, the second time I did the close I SOLD one page of sponsorship for 35,000 euro!!! It was an amazing meeting with a construction/infrastructure company called Zagorje Technobeton. The CEO didn’t speak English so we used a translator for the entire meeting, which honestly was good for me because I had more time to strategize how I would make the close. He loved the idea of sponsoring The European Times, especially because he has a lot of international partners in Western Europe. I offered 35,000 and when he said ok, I literally started shaking and could barely sign my name on the contract agreement. He signed it, and screamed, “WAIT” in Croatian, which petrified me because I thought he was going to back out as he ran into his office. He came running back with a huge stamp of the company logo, and hammered it down on the contract with an enormous smile on his face. I thought I would die of happiness and relief, and to top things off as we were leaving the CEO gave us each a big bag of goodies with wine, t-shirts, towels, etc. Pedro and I were in shock as we walked out of the office, and once it sank in that I HAD BECOME CONSULTANT and we had just sold double the amount we had made in 3 months, we started jumping up and down with joy, hugging and kissing each other, calling our coaches, and blasting “We are the Champions” the whole way home.

So now I am officially a sales consultant, and I am so happy that I accomplished this with Pedro in Croatia. This past week has been extremely slow as literally everyone in Europe is on holiday, which has been pretty nice! The CEO of Whirlpool took us out to a glamorous lunch on Tuesday, and other than that we have been trying to schedule more meetings for next week and managed to make 2 on the coast! Tomorrow we head to Split and are staying overnight there because we have another in Zadar on Tuesday, about an hour away from Split on the coast as well.

The Croatia project ends in a mere two weeks, and I do not know where I am going next! I have no idea what country I will be in (the office has suggested I might be in Austria, but we’ll see) and I don’t know who my next partner will be! (Pedro is headed to the states to study and apply for grad school) I am extremely anxious – I want to know so badly! I am also really going to miss Croatia – I love how safe it is, how nice the people are, how much I have learned about Eastern Europe, and I am really going to miss Pedro! I am hopeful I will be sent to another amazing country and make another great friend in my partner, but only time will tell! Much more to follow…